The copyright geeks among you will be interested in an impressive historical project underway in the UK, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Housed at CopyrightHistory.org, the project is self-explanatorily entitled "Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)."

FISA legislation is stalled in the House. After walking out of meetings last week, House Republicans refused on Thursday to meet with congressional Democrats to discuss hammering out differences between the Senate and House bills. The message from the Republicans is clear: Absolutely no compromise, especially on the crucial question of retroactive immunity for telecoms.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer accused the Republicans of playing politics, and wondered whether they expect the House to simply rubberstamp the Senate bill:

In its endless quest to wring value from users’ personal data, Google is branching out into health records. The Internet search giant has just announced a pilot project that would allow users to combine all their personal health records (PHRs) -- information about prescriptions, allergies, injuries, health history etc -- into a single new service that would be as accessible as a Gmail account.

The convenience factor is clear -- the new service would make it easier for people who may have multiple health providers to make sure their doctors all have the same information. And for people who seek medical attention while traveling, the ability to bypass their HMO's byzantine bureaucracy in order to have a prescription filled might be welcome.

The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video (FLV) into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers.

According to a document obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through the Freedom of Information Act, an "apparent miscommunication" resulted in unauthorized FBI access to an entire domain's email, rather than the single email account the Bureau had permission to monitor. As Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times reports:

A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

Already, [DNI McConnell] says the roughly 40 lawsuits
filed against telecom companies nationwide have chilled the private
sector's willingness to help the intelligence agencies in ways
unrelated to electronic surveillance. Exactly how is classified,
and he won't elaborate.

Over the last several years, EFF has strongly opposed the use of closed, unverifiable voting technologies, bringing litigation to investigate faulty machines and challenge bad practices as well as backing legislation that would move us towards more trustworthy elections. For 2008, EFF is making a new contribution to help keep track of election issues, technology-related or otherwise.